King of horror Tulsi Ramsay no more

MUMBAI: Film director Tulsi Ramsay, who birthed and nourished Bollywood’s horror industry with films like ‘

Do Gaz Zameen Ke Neeche

’, ‘

Darwaza

’, ‘

Purana Mandir

’ and ‘

Veerana

’ in the 1970s and 80s and almost converted the genre into a family brand, passed away on Friday. He was 77.


“He complained of chest pain and his son Deepak took him to Kokilaben Dhirubhai Ambani Hospital. He was declared dead at the hospital,” a member of Ramsay’s family told PTI.

Tulsi was one of the seven Ramsay brothers who combined to handle most departments of a film project. As director, often with tandem with brother Shyam, he constructed the grand visual template of what became a standard Ramsay film: flapping bats, screaming underclad women, derelict mansions and eerie graveyards on foggy nights. The bathtubs were murderously dangerous places to be in these scare flicks. These bikini-budget movies were technologically tacky. But in less demanding times, the ghoulish tales spooked an entire generation, largely in lowbrow theatres in smaller centres. These films were considered safe box-office propositions that made everyone happy, especially distributors and young men with a yen for fright.

When satellite television arrived in 1991, the Ramsays were quick to spot the opportunity that the new platform offered and latched on to the new gravy train with the late-night ‘Zee Horror Show’ (1993), which lasted more than five years.

Tulsi co-directed ‘Do Gaz Zameen Ke Neeche’ (1972) with brother Shyam. The suspense film hit pay dirt and created the stencil for similar ventures which were either supernaturals (‘Purana Mandir’, ‘Veerana’) or murder mysteries (‘Saboot’, ‘Telephone’). He generally preferred smaller stars such as Deepak Parashar, Anil Dhawan (well past his glory days) and Puneet Issar. But there were exceptions, such as Telephone (co-directed with Shyam) which featured Shatrughan Sinha and Parveen Babi. Surprisingly, several Ramsay films, such as ‘Sannata’, ‘Saboot’, ‘Hotel’ and ‘Purana Mandir’, had good music, a rather unexpected bonus in a horror film. ‘Purana Mandir’ had pop singer-cum-composer Ajit Singh’s classic, ‘Woh beete din yaad hain’.

Following his death, Yashraj films posted via Twitter that the title ‘Darr’ was already registered by Shyam and Tulsi Ramsay and when Yash Chopra requested them to give him the title, they Ramsays agreed.

Tulsi’s death caused an outpouring of grief on social media, especially among fans who grew up watching his films. Razor Sharp tweeted, “RIP #TulsiRamsay. That name brings back memories of my 7-8 cousins at my house, Saturday nights and 3-4 horror movies back to back on our VCR. Thank you for those memories.” Writer-director Suparn S Varma said, “End of an era! RIP #TulsiRamsay. You shaped the way a generation saw horror films in India.”


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